With two seasons done and one left before the next cut for promotion and relegation, a look at the standings. Things look lively for 2025 with Astana and Arkéa already below the line for relegation but would one or both sign up today for relegation if they could have the guarantee their team stayed afloat for 2026 and beyond? Meanwhile Uno-X are on the up and Cofidis and DSM Firmenich-PostNL have reasons to be nervous.
Rules reminder
Every three years the top-18 men’s teams qualify for WorldTeam status, which includes the right to start all the major races including the golden ticket of the Tour de France. The current cycle is 2023, 2024 and 2025 so there’s one season coming up to determine which teams move up or down. WorldTeams below 18th place face relegation. Teams are ranked by the haul of points each year by their 20 best-scoring riders. You can see point and rankings tables here.
Does it matter?
Many a team manager will say variations “we just want to win, we don’t care about points as they’ll follow with victory” yet two sentences later demonstrate the recall to know how many points go to 7th place in a 1.Pro or the points for finishing 12th in the Vuelta and so on. In short several teams don’t like to admit it but are quietly obsessed by points and it drives race programs, recruitment and race tactics.
The fear is relegated teams may not survive. Once they lose the certainty of a Tour de France start sponsors may not stick around, riders won’t want to join and so on. Lotto-Dstny and IPT prove this isn’t true but one is a national institution; the other a personal hobbyhorse so there are reasons they’re still going but backed by ongoing investment that’s kept them competitive as de facto WorldTeams.
If today was tomorrow…
That’s the standings for 2023 and 2024 with 2025 to go. There are two ProTeams in the top-18 above the red line: Lotto-Dstny and Israel-PremierTech. As things stand they can look forward to promotion. This will come at the expense of Astana and Arkéa-B&B Hotels which sit below 18th place.
What changed in 2024?
This chart shows the points haul for 2024 only with the extent of UAE’s season visible from space. Decathlon-Ag2r La Mondiale enjoyed almost a dream season – the Tour de France was the nightmare – and so they bound up from 17th place to 11th in the 2023-2024 rankings thanks to a season that saw them pip Ineos.
At the other end of the scale Uno-X are now scoring alongside WorldTeams. Bahrain had a tough time. Cofidis fared worse, they enjoyed a decent 2023 but plummeted down the tables in 2024 to put themselves in relegation danger.
All to ride for?
The chart here zooms in on the teams around the relegation zone. With one season to go there’s plenty to race for. Astana have now hired 11 new riders with Matteo Malucelli the lastest. The team sits 4,700 points behind Cofidis in 18th place and that’s a a chasm to close. It could just be achievable on condition of having a great season and others being stuck. All the new hires are necessary but insufficient, the hard part will be creating the environment for them to score, to spend part of the team’s budget on training camps, performance improvements and racing on as many fronts as possible.
Arkéa-B&B have more points but looking ahead they’re in trouble. Imagine hot air balloonists jettisoning ballast to get some lift, only here they’re lobbing their best riders overboard. Clément Champoussin has joined Astana, Dan McLay to Visma and Vincenzo Albanese is reportedly going to EF too. A weak team already, they could fare worse in 2025 although they’ll hope signings Arnaud Démare and Florian Sénéchal perk up and Kévin Vauquelin starts to deliver more on his talent
Both teams will want to stay up but there’s a secondary contest to rank as high as possible during 2025 alone as UCI rules stipulate automatic invites to grand tours go to the best two teams outside the World Tour on the 2025 rankings. So if Astana can’t get out of the deficit created in 2023-24, they can aim to score big in 2025 and still qualify by right for the 2026 Tour de France.
Existential questions
Alas we can speculate further. Arkéa-B&B are not unloading top quality riders at the moment by choice. Plus the team’s title sponsorship deals run out at the end of next year, the squad could expire before being relegated if the sponsorship isn’t secured and this is where things intertwine, it’s not an easy deal to land given they’re facing relegation and may not ride the Tour de France in the future.
Meanwhile Astana aren’t on the UCI’s list of teams for 2025. This is an admin issue, the UCI says some teams “did not submit all the essential documents before the deadline of 15 October 2024 and are therefore not included in the list”. However there’s range here from Astana being a day late with one PDF to fundamental problems with the team’s ability to fund itself next season given it’s supposed to be funded by a bike brand that seems to be spending more on a team than the likes of Trek, Specialized or Pinarello.
If either or both relegated teams don’t exist come 2025 or 2026 then the one visible change would be in terms of invitations to grand tours, instead of the best two teams of 2025 automatically invited it would be best three. We’re a long way from this… but now you know.
Cofidis vs Uno-X
So far two teams up, two teams down. But there could be a third battle with Uno-X closing in on Cofidis, the French team was finished 4,000 points ahead in 2023 but the Norwegians have halved this gap in 2024. This sets up a tight 2025 especially with Cofidis losing two of their top scorers in Axel Zingle and Guillaume Martin. In come Emanuel Buchmann, Alex Aranburu and Simon Carr and they’ll have to settle into a team that’s having a tough time.
More teams in trouble?
DSM Firmenich-PostNL are just 407 points ahead of Cofidis right now too. They should be ok given the roster after some bad luck this year but that’s the point, they’re close to the drop because of this and more hiccups spell trouble.
Intermarché-Wanty are 1,700 points above DSM which should be ok but note their reliance on Biniam Girmay, he’s proportionally important to them like Pogačar and Evenepoel to UAE and Soudal-QS bringing a third of their points so there’s the risk of stalling with injury or illness.
Wildcard invites
Next year’s invites to the grand tours will see the best two non-WorldTeams on the 2024 rankings (not 2023-2024 combined) and it’s Lotto and IPT anyway. This leaves two elective places for organisers but things get dynamic with a game of musical chairs. Lotto turned down the Giro in 2024 and they’re likely to do the same next year given belt-tightening which frees up a space. Tudor might like to do the Giro given the company has sponsored RCS races but now has its eye on the Tour de France with the likes of Julian Alaphilippe and Marc Hirschi as candidates to displace Uno-X or TotalEnergies. We’ll see still see Caja Rural, Kern Pharma and Euskaltel-Euskadi jostling for two places at the Vuelta.
Conclusion
Everything points to Lotto and IPT back the World Tour for 2026. Who goes down at their expense? Astana are well behind but they’ve been on a shopping spree to recruit 11 riders so it’ll be interesting to see if they can close the gap in 2025. Assuming their paperwork gets approved it’ll be a story for 2025. Arkéa-B&B Hotels have more points right now but should struggle next year as they lose valuable riders and so far haven’t signed anyone resembling a replacement, plus they risk slipping into a vicious spiral where the spectre of relegation scares off sponsors. Plus we could see a third promotion-relegation contest if Uno-X thrive and Cofidis dive.
One further reason why all this matters is the mix of reforms coming after 2026. Last time promotion and relegation was just that, up or down. Now the sport is meant to be taking a different shape – how much remains to be seen – and being at the top could provide more of say, a different calendar and possibly more funding. Teams and managers don’t want to miss out.